In Nepal's mountainous mid-western region, many villages have no electricity and can only be reached on foot. Technical aids for the daily work in the fields and in the home are almost unheard of. Women cook on open fires and crush fresh ingredients, such as herbs for the daily meal with lentils, between two stones. There are no food processors or even fridges to keep food fresh. Until now, women or children have had to collect water for cooking from sources some distance away and carry it all the way home. 

One of Solaqua's partner organisations is helping various villages install water pipes. Through months of working with picks and shovels, the village communities dig out trenches in order to channel water near to their homes. This not only makes cooking easier, but also facilitates simple hygiene measures such as hand-washing and washing dishes. 

Within the framework of this project, the Solaqua Foundation not only ensures that water is available, it also makes sure that it is pure and remains so. In workshops, one of the many activities carried out, villagers learn how invisible bacteria and viruses in water can impact their health and how they can be neutralised. They also find out where they can obtain the products they need for purifying their water.

Since the Solaqua Foundation attaches considerable value to helping bring about sustainable improvements, it promotes not only self-help among the local communities, but market-based mechanisms, too. Mobile vendors are brought together in a network and given training on water products, so that villages can buy items such as filters and replacement parts on as local a basis as possible and be shown how to use them properly. Without such measures (or even if products are handed out free of charge) the danger is that products are obtained on a one-time basis from a larger location but then not used correctly or replaced as needed.